Over the past 12 months, Annex Cloud has acquired myriad new customers, including retailers of Apparel and Luxury Goods, Beauty and Cosmetics, Home and Office, Sports and Health, Consumer Electronics, and Media Entertainment. The Company increased its headcount by more than 40%, and in Q4 2015, will open a new office in the United Kingdom to serve the growing demand for its products in United Kingdom and Western Europe.

“Annex Cloud’s success is a reflection of our ability to empower brands with the tools to not only attract and retain their socially active and mobile customers, but to also create a sense of loyalty by making their shopping experience interactive, visually engaging and rewarding,” said Annex Cloud Co-Founder and Chief Strategist, Al Lalani.

Unlike other vendors who simply collect information, Annex Cloud aggregates and analyzes data to provide brands with actionable, accurate social intelligence on customer preferences and shopping behaviors in real-time. The more in tune companies are with customers via social media, the more effective they can be with marketing initiatives such as contests, share and save, ratings and reviews, post-purchase sharing, social login, and visual commerce programs.

Through its software and best practices as-a-service, Annex Cloud makes it cost effective and easy for marketers to track activity and reward customers for their reviews, recommendations, real world posts of product images, social sharing and commenting, and other displays of loyalty.

“Traditional loyalty programs are being replaced by solutions that seamlessly integrate with social commerce and visual commerce applications,” said Annex Cloud Vice President of Marketing and Products, Akbar Jaffer. “Companies that have migrated to Annex Cloud are enjoying tremendous growth in their business and exceptional returns on their investment.”

Market research from Booz & Company forecasts that social commerce will account for $30 billion in U.S. sales next year, which indicates a severe paradigm shift in consumer behavior and buying patterns.

“Retailers must accept this new reality,” added Al Lalani, “and embrace mediums such as visualization through which to inspire purchasers and product discovery, and to sustain relationships with their socially active target audience. Authenticity and precision marketing are critical factors that bring products to life, add value to and enhance a person’s digital commerce experience.

Like reviews and referrals, user-generated content such as ‘selfies’ and live product shots are unmatched in their ability to influence sales.”

The growing need for imagery has forced merchants to drastically increase the number of pictures and videos in a gallery, making it necessary to inject intelligence into organizing and prioritizing displays.

Earlier this summer, Annex Cloud unveiled its Smart Image Ranking Algorithm (SIRA) that enables retailers to automatically rank large numbers of pictures in a product gallery based on transactional factors, such as clicks, revenue, shares, relevant comments, likes, friends, and followers.

ABOUT Annex Cloud

Founded in 2010, Annex Cloud is an enterprise Software-as-a-Service company that helps the leading brands worldwide acquire convert, and retain customers with the only purpose-built, complete omni-channel customer loyalty and social commerce solution. Social Annex's product suites include Customer Loyalty, Sharing and Referrals, Contests, Social Login Services, User Generated Content, and Visual Commerce programs.